Nonintercepting electron beam size monitor using optical diffraction radiation interference

In recent years, the use of diffraction radiation (DR), emitted when a charged particle beam passes through a rectangular slit, has been proposed and successfully tested as a nonintercepting diagnostic of high brightness beams. However, some problems related to the control of the particle trajectory through the slit still remain. If an additional slit is placed in front of the first one, at a distance shorter than the radiation formation length, interference between the forward diffraction radiation from the upstream slit and the backward diffraction radiation from the downstream slit can be observed. In this paper we report the first experimental observation of this effect, which we call here optical diffraction radiation interference (ODRI). If the two slits have different dimensions and are not aligned on the same axis, the properties of the ODRI pattern can be effectively used for nonintercepting beam diagnostics, especially for the unambiguously determination of the beam size. Indeed, the advantage of ODRI compared with a single aperture DR screen is due to the reduction of synchrotron radiation background, the increase of sensitivity for transverse beam dimensions, and the possibility to separate effects caused by the beam size and by beam offset within the slit.